Culture Connect Featured Event

Are you a book lover or crafty person who would like to learn how to make your own unique publications? Then join Franklin Street Works and artist Emily Larned for a free, public bookbinding workshop on Thursday, June 13th from 5:30 - 7:00 pm where you will learn simple, non-adhesive book structures that are easily made without special materials or tools. These basic handmade books can be made as editions or as handmade works of art. This event is part of Strange Invitation programming and is inspired by Franklin Street Works’ Reanimation Library branch, which features a physical collection of rare books that have fallen out of routine circulation.

"Marshall McLuhan said that when a technology becomes obsolete, it becomes an art form," Larned says. "And that's what we're seeing with the book as it becomes supplanted by digital storage and search technologies.” So, how else do the impact of books still resonate today in our digital era? Franklin Street Works’ Reanimation Library branch addresses some of these issues by making explicit what isn’t being digitized. In what is meant to inspire the production of new creative work, you will find books with a variety of illustration styles and printing techniques that have disappeared in most digital content due to the fact that photographs are now cheaper and quicker to make than illustrations.

Although the handmade book no longer serves its responsibility of recording the knowledge of humanity, it retains other qualities that it has always had: a book is portable and requires no batteries or power, and a photocopied edition can be made inexpensively and distributed in public space anonymously. A book is finished in a moment in time, and is a great vehicle for aesthetic exploration, sharing of ideas, storytelling, and good old self-expression. “And maybe there’s also something to the fact that there will never be an untold number of other people accessing it at the same time,” Larned says. “It is limited and finite and physically inhabits the world – just like us.”